Here's the thing about Koreans: they're pretty major. Their economy is big, their menswear industry is booming, the buildings are tall - even they are tall. The omnipresent eye of fashion is currently centred on the burgeoning fashion industry of the Korean capital where Seoul Fashion Week is facilitating not just a new generation of designers but a fascinating men's street style scene that represents the city's fashionability better than any designer. Internationally, big brands such as Wooyoungmi and Juun.J fly the flag for Korean menswear while back in Seoul newcomers such as Blindness, R.shemiste, and Supercomma B are forging a bright future for the city's fashion export.

But it's outside the shows - held in Zaha Hadid's spaces hip –like Dongdaemun Design Plaza in March and October - that Seoul's menswear movement shows its most fascinating side. Here, Seoul's finest young men loiter in the Korean coo l kid look du jour : part New Romantics and part East ern Bloc, it's best described as the underground Berlin uniform of the Far East - long black coats, frayed black jeans and black berets in tow. The boys of Seoul are impeccably dressed, all DIY in quite effortless garments that hang off their racehorse physiques like something out of a model agent's dream, thanks in no small part to the compulsory military service carries out by all young men in Korea.

Models, of course, are a prime Korean export: boys such as Jin Park, Born Li, Do Byung Wook, and Leo Lim practically invaded the AW16 shows in Milan and Paris in January, demonstrating Korean masculinity 's current magnetism for the West. In a time of androgyny and gender-neutrality - embodied by Alessandro Michele's collections for Gucci over the past year - the look and attitude of Seoul's male youth makes total sense. While homosexuality is legal in Korea it's still somewhat taboo, paradoxically creating a youth scene of free expression where a certain look isn't necessarily associated with a certain sexuality.

It enables young men to dress up largely without prejudice, a scenario that's virtually unimaginable in the West. In Korea the term 'kkonminam' - flower boys - has long been used to describe the male look perhaps best known from K-Pop where elfin- looking young men transform themselves into effeminate porcelain roses ; without sexual connotation, mind you. Justin Bieber is a man's man compared to these boys, but girls still scream for them. For Seoul's fashion industry and its poster boys, the new menswear revolution is a reality.